In business communications the onus is usually on the speaker to frame things in such a way that the audience can understand them. When employees misinterpret managers then it can be assumed that managers misspoke.
"When managers fail to communicate" would be a better way of framing the topic.
The headline could've been better, no question.
Except you're missing out the crucial employees part, and it's hard to add without making the headline long and unwieldy. And misinterpret has fairly significantly different loading than "fail to communicate". I still think the original headline is better than yours. The target audience is managers, and will implicitly understand that a it's the managers fault when an employee misinterprets the manager.
Headline writing is hard.
It is my experience that employees who hear it phrased that way, though, will from painful experience assume that they're about to be blamed for something.